Web Camera yet again

[David Dunbar <ddunbar@geocenter.com>]

Toms' web camera is accessible using wine. As described before the 
incantation is

wine iexplore http://192.168.1.50/main.html &

The main.html is not required, it just doesn't display a banner at the 
top of the page so you have a bit more room on your screen. This starts 
Internet Exploder at the camera instead of the default home page.

Getting to the web camera this way has the drawback of pegging the CPU. 
Accessing it over the internet is glacially slow. I gather from Tom 
that it is not speedy for him either.

I have been poking around trying to get Konqueror to view the camera so 
far without success. The offending piece of main.html is this:

  <script language="JavaScript">
  <!--
  if ((navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet 
Explorer")&&(navigator.platform != "MacPPC"))
  {
  document.write("<OBJECT ID=\"VaCtrl\" WIDTH=714 HEIGHT=546");
  document.write(" CLASSID=CLSID:A93B47FD-9BF6-4DA8-97FC-9270B9D64A6C");
  document.write(" CODEBASE=\"/plugin/h263ctrl.cab#version=1,7,0,19\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"Url\" VALUE=\"/cgi-bin/video.vam\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"VSize\" VALUE=\"SIF2\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"RemoteIP\" VALUE=\"838969536\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"RemotePort\" VALUE=\"5001\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"RemoteID\" VALUE=\"30686\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"DisplayTimeFormat\" VALUE=\"1\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"DigitalZoomEnableChk\" 
VALUE=\"false\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"DigitalZoomEdit\" VALUE=\"true\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"Language\" VALUE=\"EN\">");
  document.write("<PARAM NAME=\"Stretch\" VALUE=\"1\">");
  document.write("</OBJECT>");
  }
  //-->
  </script>

Basically, if you are not identified as Internet Exploder or are using 
a Mac, the video part of the window won't even display. The remote IP 
address changes every time the camera is accessed. The 
cgi-bin/video.vam can be accessed directly if you can read binary. The 
plugin/h263ctlr.cab is the ActiveX component that is supposed to be 
downloaded and run on your machine. The rest appears to be harmless.

Konqueror has a place under the Configure Konqueror menu to change the 
browser identifier for specific web sites. There are several versions 
of IE listed, none of which display the frame for the camera, much less 
the video.

At this point I am out of ideas. Tom I think you are stuck with 
iexplore.

Rant alert.

The person who decided to use this mess must work for M$. Don't ever 
write web applications like this. If you find that you absolutely have 
to, at least put a message that is displayed if you can't run on the 
system being viewed from.

The manual for the camera does say it uses ActiveX and expects Internet 
Exploder. It does this on page 136 out of 142. It doesn't say it won't 
work on a Mac.

David
David Dunbar <ddunbar@geocenter.com>
Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the 
statue.